Create a Social Networking Site and Monetize it

2009 was a tough year for many people and businesses as we experienced the largest economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.  We saw many the largest companies fail, countries bankrupt or on the verge of financial disasters, and trillions of dollars in consumer wealth disappear.   But during the same year, Twitter.com audience grew 343%, Tagged.com grew 330%, Ning.com grew 251%, and rSitez.com grew 151%.  Not only that, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook.com Founder/CEO at age 25 ranking in Forbes.com went from 321 to 158, as his net worth went from $1.5 billion to $2 billion during this same period in the last year.

If these businesses did this well in such a terrible economic period imagine their possibilities in the next 1 to 5 years as the global economy recovers.  Could you have your own social networking business and possibly benefit as the global economy recover as well?  Have you ever thought it would be nice to ‘get in the game?’  Have you thought about trying to position yourself to benefit from what could be the next stage of growth for online businesses?  If your answer is yes to any of these questions, then please read on.  Here are some things you can do to get your own online social networking business started today and to start positioning yourself to take advantage of what will certainly be a new recovery period for building wealth in a new global market.

Identify a Niche Market and a Clear Value

Creating a website like Facebook or Twitter will not be enough.  Even though members will have membership to multiple social networking sites, the key driver will be the value you provide to this audience.  Therefore, you should have a good understanding of the audience you will want to join your site and the clear value you will provide to them.  Why should someone who is a member of Facebook and LinkedIn also join your site?  What clear value do you provide?  What problem do you solve?  Once you are clear about this then you are ready to move to the next step.

Create your Social Networking Site

There are different ways you can go about this.  To learn about some of these options you may want to see my blog about the Top 4 ways to create a social networking site like Myspace and Facebook.

When selecting a vendor to create your site you should consider what you want your site to do to create a clear and unique value to your audience.  Can the vendor provide this to you?  Do these features exist in the core application?  If not, can the application be customized or modified to provide this value?  What costs are involved with this?

Vendors:   rSitez.com

Seed your Site

Once your site has been created you will need to pre-populate it before your launch.  No one wants to go to a ghost site.  If you were to go to a newly launched site with only 2 members you would probably leave and not come back.  Recruit friends and family or a focus group to help you add photos, blogs, articles, videos etc to the site so that when members arrive they won’t feel like they are alone on the site and they can start to immediately receive the value provided by the site.

Market your Site

‘If you build it they will come’, phrase is not true in this case.  There are many social networking sites with very few or no members.  The correct phrase for online businesses is ‘if you market it they may come’.   Here are some ways to market your site.

Press Releases: You can post free or inexpensive press releases about your site and demonstrate the value of your site.  Even though press releases are traditionally targeted to journalists with the hope of someone writing about your product, this has changed somewhat.  Press releases are now picked up by the major search engines and can be used as another way to inform internet surfers about your product and services even if no journalist pick up your release.  Press releases have become multi-media and social.  So now you can push multimedia content to social networks and online communities.  Multimedia content including photos, videos, links and other content can now be embedded in your release.

Vendors:  seopressreleases.com, pitchengine.com, prbuzz.com

Blogs:  Blogs are one of the best marketing tools available.  You can write about any information valuable to your industry or niche group to bring attention to your website.  Blogs are free and with the correct content and tagging, can bring a lot of visits and attention to your site.  You should always include a link about your site or reference to your site as a part of the blog or in the credits so that people will be able to find your site or click through to your site.  Blogging also helps you to demonstrate your expertise in your specific niche area.

Vendors:  Wordpress.com, blogger.com

Social Bookmarks: Social bookmarks sites allow you to bookmark your site online.  A bookmark is basically a link to your site, blog, or article.  This link is then shared by others on the social bookmark site.    The more people that bookmark your site or content, the greater relevance the article has.  But also, the more links you will be able receive to your site from the article.

Vendors: delicious.com, stumbleupon.com

SEO your site: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helps programs from Google, Yahoo and other search engines (called bots or web crawlers) to understand your site and to index your site so that the site can be easily found when people are looking for similar or related content.  The more search engine friendly your site is, the more likely it will be positioned highly when people are looking for this kind of content.  Your site and all content you post online should have SEO involved to help increase visits to your site.  Your blogs or articles should be tagged to increase your SEO relevance.

Post Articles: Writing articles is similar to blogging.  The main difference is that with blogging you are typically posting general or targeted information on your own or related blog.  With articles, you are typically writing content as an expert which you can submit to be posted on other sites.  These articles can be posted on online magazines, expert magazines, online newspapers etc.  These online journals can often have high ranking and prestige that will create greater credibility for your site and drive a significant amount of traffic to your site.  Each online journal will have different rules for submitting articles so you will need to read these rules before submitting them.  This is also a great way to demonstrate your expertise in a specific area.

Vendors:  ezinearticles.com, ezinearticles.com/

Google AdWords: You can be placed in the top of any search results based on the amount of money you can afford to spend on Google Adwords.  The concept is very simple but brilliant.  You can try every way to be found ‘generically’.  A generic search result is the list displayed on the left side of the google search results page.  Or you can be guaranteed to be found among the millions of sites at the top of the page or the right of the page under the list of ‘Sponsored’ site.  You can set whatever budget you like.  Each time someone search on a keyword you set your ad is displayed.  Each time someone clicks on your ad, you are charged a set fee by google.

Vendor.  Google.com, yahoo.com

In part 2 of this blog I will discuss how you can manage your site, monetize it, incorporate a new business entity and collect money without ever having to leave your home or without even needing to go to the bank.

To learn more about creating and monetizing your own unique social networking site please visit www.rsitez.com.

About the author

Rohan Hall is the Founder/CEO of rSitez, Inc. (www.rsitez.com), a technology firm that helps entrepreneurs create unique revenue-based social networking sites.  He is the author of Stop Working, a book that teaches entrepreneurs how to use technology, globalization, and networks to build a global business.  He has developed technologies for a wide range of entrepreneurs and Fortune500 clients including HP, Corning, Oracle, Honda and various others.

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